Posted
by
ScuttleMonkey
on Monday March 09, 2009 @04:15PM
from the bright-future-of-the-iss dept.

Matt_dk writes "Move over, Morning Star. Once Canadarm2 helps install the fourth and final set of solar array wings to the International Space Station later this month, the Station will surpass Venus as the brightest object in the night sky, second only to the Moon. The Space Shuttle Discovery is set to deliver the power-generating solar panels and Starboard 6 (S6) truss segment to the ISS on the 125th mission in the Shuttle program, known as STS-119/15A (slated for launch on March 11)."

And, not to be a stickler, but aircraft. The lights from aircraft are probably brighter too.

That being said, I live in a pretty dense urban environment (read: lots of light pollution). When the new modifications are made, will I be able to see the ISS and identify it as such from the ground with the naked eye?

I would say yes because the visible ISS passes are at dawn or dusk. I live in a similarly dense environment and had no problem seeing ISS and the Shuttle the last time it was there (in fact I saw the two orbiting just after disconnection, the Shuttle slightly ahead of the ISS and that was a pretty impressive sight). Just look up which part of the sky the pass will be for you and move away from any local bright lights that might obscure the view.

When I was going to UCF, I had the shit scared out of my by a shuttle landing. Had just moved in to new apartment and bedroom had sliding glass door out to patio. When the shuttle passed overhead, the sonic boom rattled the hell out of it, like someone was trying to come. Being woken up so early (10:30 am) sucks!

Then there have been comets and supernova that have been visible during daylight. Yea, I think the ISS is cool to observe, but don't call it 2nd brightest after the moon.

Okay, but those supernova are long gone so while they were on top back then, they aren't relevant today. You could also make an argument that the flare's apparent brightness only lasts a couple seconds while the ISS is bright for the majority of its traversal. Doesn't change that the flare really is much brighter when it occurs, but on the other hand on a normal night I'm perfectly comfortable saying that Venus is the 2nd brightest object in the sky.

Either way, this is a dramatic increase in the brightness of ISS. On a clear night far away from cities, ISS is easy to see, but also easy to lose in the sea of stars of similar brightness*. To be sure that you'll find it, you have to know roughly when and where it will appear, and then look for the star that moves. If it becomes brighter than Venus, you won't need a schedule or even a dark sky to be able to easily see when it passes over.

* Okay WP says that its max magnitude is equal to that of Venus, but I've never seen ISS under those conditions then. If the upgraded ISS will only be brighter than Venus at maximum, then maybe it's not that big a change as I'm thinking.

Yes it does. It does already. You're comparing flare mags with standard mags. The ISS _does_ flare, and when it does it is much brighter than Iridium. Sadly, Mike Tyrrell's page is gone, but there was a collection of images there.

You have to have your latitude/longitude VERY exact, even a few kilometers off target will greatly diminish its apparent magnitude. Use Google Earth, and also make sure you are setting the lat/long display to decimal, not hour/min/second.

Move over, Morning Star. Once Canadarm2 helps install the fourth and final set of solar array wings to the International Space Station later this month, the Station will surpass Venus as the brightest object in the night sky, second only to the Moon.

I keep thinking of the effects of a discarded Coke bottle on those non-technically savvy people in "The Gods Must Be Crazy"...
Perhaps they will select Three Wise Men to go on a pilgrimage toward the bright new star...

I live in a city so the light pollution messes up any chances I have at looking at a starry sky. I have as a child always found it incomprehensible that people said that you couldn't count all the stars because I can surely do it where I live.

Oh wow, I've just had another one of those crazy religious flashback flashback flashbacks (/GTA reference).

Back in my stupider days (okay, there was a girl involved, but I digress) I was attending religious meetings that discussed idiotic things like bible numerics or whatever it's called.

I talked to the leader of the meeting, a pastor if memory serves, and I asked him on the stance they/the bible all took on the subject of other alien intelligences (I likely used the phrase UFOs, but the meaning was there)

Even growing up in a small town I didn't really comprehend how many stars there were until we went camping. We were in Dinosaur Provincial Park and once it got dark it was amazing. With almost no nearby light pollution, you can clearly see an arm of the milky way overhead. Even without that arm, there are too many stars to count.

I live in a city so the light pollution messes up any chances I have at looking at a starry sky.

I live in the suburbs. Fortunately for me, the light pollution isn't bad enough to make star gazing difficult. I've recently become interested in astronomy. Thanks to Stellarium, I can easily pick out Venus in the night's sky, and am working on other stars and planets.

However, I live in the flight path of a nearby airport. How can I tell the difference between ISS, and a passing plane?

Planes will have navigation strobes on (they blink), though if you're looking right at the landing lights they can be hard to see sometimes. Satellites will be steady, not blinking, and not changing course. You also won't ever see one flying east-to-west. West-to-east and north-south either way, but not east-west.

Really you don't have to live in the middle of nowhere. I live in Houston and have seen ISS fly overs more than once with the naked eye (at night).

I live in the suburbs of Glasgow, and despite the hideously inefficient street lighting (the sky gets more light than the ground) the ISS is very very easy to spot - at the moment it's nearly as bright as Venus when it comes past.

You can use http://www.heavens-above.com [heavens-above.com] to predict visible passes. Don't forget that there are lots of passes where you don't see i

Some say Venus is visible during the day (tho' I've not seen it myself).

If the ISS does turn out to be brighter than Venus - which varies in brightness considerably, depending on where in it's orbit it is - relative to earth, then it will be interesting to see if it's visible during daytime passes, too.

Recently I've been seeing Venus (from suburban Denver) in the western sky nearly every night. If I know where to look, I can usually make it out in the early morning when the sun is still on the opposite side of the sky.

I've seen the ISS during the day, and that was back in 2002 or so. It was pretty close to sunset, and it was awfully bright, Venus-like, even, when it went by overhead. That said, maybe I just saw something else that I *thought* was the ISS. I've seen satellites before, though, and this looked like one, just way brighter.

There's a reason that Venus' nickname is "The Morning Star";) You're not gonna see it at high noon or anything, but it's rather visible for a little while after dawn, and before sunset, and typically just looks like an abnormally bright star. I used to see it quite often when getting ready to go to school as a kid. Since the ISS moves though, it may be difficult to tell it apart from an airplane:/

Venus is quite easy to see during the day if you know where to look and use binoculars. Stand in a shadow, so you don't accidentally look at the sun and fry your eyes.

It's a little tricky with the naked eye, but if you've found it with binoculars first, it's easy. It's actually easier if there are a few clouds nearby. If the sky is clear blue, your eyes don't know what to focus on, so Venus is likely too blurry to see.

When Shoemaker-Levy was landing on Jupiter, I managed to see Jupiter in daylight in a s

Actually, the company that makes it (MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates' space division) was very almostly sold to a US defense contractor last spring. Which would kind of have sucked for Canada's space industry, since that company is basically...our only one.

Solar panels are fairly dark. It's just that the night sky background is *really* dark. For comparison, the Moon has an albedo (fraction of light reflected) of 0.12. That's a fairly dark gray for something in normal realms of experience -- but a bright white against the night sky. Shine enough light on something with a dark background, and it will look bright.

I have not yet seen the ISS, but will probably look for it soon with my 5-year old daughter.

One of my strongest childhood memories is of watching the Echo [wikipedia.org] satellite go overhead from my grandmother's backyard during a summer family barbecue, probably sometime between 1966 to 1968 (though it had been launched in 1960). Everyone was aware it would be coming overhead so we were all waiting for it -- they must have announced it in the paper or something for our area. It seemed a very bright star and passed

I do feel sad for today's generation, I don't think they ever get the sense of the fantastic we experienced so often in the 60s and 70s from our space program.

Are you kidding? We only have two robots wandering around Mars for the past several years, a space telescope, multiple missions to other planets, comets, and a host of other missions I can't even list. You're trying to tell me that pales in comparison to what amounts to little more than a giant balloon in orbit? It seems to me it's easier for a 10

I look for the ISS several times a month. A schedule is here [heavens-above.com]
In a given month the ISS is visible about one week in the morning sky and one week in the evening. The orbit moves to be optimal for US or Soviet launches at different times.

No, he didn't necessarily stop reading there, but... people compose their first reply in their heads as soon as they read the title, and displaying the usual level of/. impulse control, they hit read more, hit reply, and post it. Then they read the summary, make another reply. Then, maybe, they read the actual article. If they haven't already gotten distracted by all the other clueless posts and arguments over first reactions and speculating that's so much more fun than actually learning the facts.:p

It amazes me that so many allegedly "educated" people have fallen so quickly and so hard for a fraudulent fabrication of such laughable proportions. The very idea that a gigantic ball of rock happens to orbit our planet, showing itself in neat, four-week cycles -- with the same side facing us all the time -- is ludicrous. Furthermore, it is an insult to common sense and a damnable affront to intellectual honesty and integrity. That people actually believe it is evidence that the liberals have wrested the last vestiges of control of our public school system from decent, God-fearing Americans (as if any further evidence was needed! Daddy's Roommate? God Almighty!)

Documentaries such as Enemy of the State have accurately portrayed the elaborate, byzantine network of surveillance satellites that the liberals have sent into space to spy on law-abiding Americans. Equipped with technology developed by Handgun Control, Inc., these satellites have the ability to detect firearms from hundreds of kilometers up. That's right, neighbors.. the next time you're out in the backyard exercising your Second Amendment rights, the liberals will see it! These satellites are sensitive enough to tell the difference between a Colt.45 and a.38 Special! And when they detect you with a firearm, their computers cross-reference the address to figure out your name, and then an enormous database housed at Berkeley is updated with information about you.

Of course, this all works fine during the day, but what about at night? Even the liberals can't control the rotation of the Earth to prevent nightfall from setting in (only Joshua was able to ask for that particular favor!) That's where the "moon" comes in. Powered by nuclear reactors, the "moon" is nothing more than an enormous balloon, emitting trillions of candlepower of gun-revealing light. Piloted by key members of the liberal community, the "moon" is strategically moved across the country, pointing out those who dare to make use of their God-given rights at night!

Yes, I know this probably sounds paranoid and preposterous, but consider this. Despite what the revisionist historians tell you, there is no mention of the "moon" anywhere in literature or historical documents -- anywhere -- before 1950. That is when it was initially launched. When President Josef Kennedy, at the State of the Union address, proclaimed "We choose to go to the moon", he may as well have said "We choose to go to the weather balloon." The subsequent faking of a "moon" landing on national TV was the first step in a long history of the erosion of our constitutional rights by leftists in this country. No longer can we hide from our government when the sun goes down.

I don't think it's because they burn out. They're just cycled through to give the illusion of realism, and to prevent heat buildup. If the moon was on all the time, it would get very hot and the power bill would be very expensive.

Are you nuts? Less than a minute googling 'history of the moon' will give you hundreds of references to it pre 1950.

And for the sake of argument, let's say all of those references were fabricated by historians. Then how do you explain the tides? Menstrual cycles? Even fish are more likely to bite on certain weeks, and it all has to do with lunar cycles. You don't really think that all of the above is recent to the past 60 years, do you?

Here [gutenberg.org] is a pre-1950 reference to the Moon. And you can easily check its veracity. The moon is close enough that a cannon shot can reach it. So, all you need to do to check if this is true or not is to tie yourself to a cannonball and shoot to the moon. Happy landing... er moonings [google.com].

But some times of the year Venus isn't visible at night and some (not necessarily the same) times of the month, the moon isn't visible at night.
So there may well be nights when the ISS is the brightest thing up there.